It's Day 3 of The Manti Chronicles, and the question isn't when he knew Lennay Kekau was actually a blow-up doll and whether he took her to the Notre Dame football banquet.

It's whether we've all lost our Lennay Kookin' minds.

Te'o's imaginary girlfriend might be the most overblown scandal in sports history. That doesn't mean it's not newsworthy or bizarrely compelling. It's just that our fascination is about 1,000 times larger than the real-life ramifications.

There is none, or pretty close. Yet this is almost being treated like JoePa II on steroids.

A SportsCenter anchor introduced it as the biggest story of the month. Bigger than the NFL playoffs, the BCS title game and Lance Armstrong?

You can't turn on the TV or radio or sit down for lunch without hearing the latest twist. Countless professional and amateur shrinks have weighed in. I think I saw Geraldo interviewing an actual catfish about catfishing the other night.

"If Manti Te'o is Gay."

The catfish didn't say that, but it was a headline at the Huffington Post. We are in full scandal mode, and I'm wallowing as much as the next inquiring mind. But I can't help feeling a little sheepish when I think about previous scandals that rocked the college world.

If criminal laws weren't broken, NCAA regulations were trampled. Lives were often destroyed. The transgressions and tragedies made for somber, serious reading.

This is more like a trashy novel. Instead of Fabio on the cover we have Jack Swarbrick giving his heart to Te'o. What's inside isn't pure fiction, but it's almost as harmless.

It's doubtful any laws were broken. The NCAA Manual certainly doesn't prohibit make-believe girlfriends. Notre Dame gained no competitive advantage. If anything, the story distracted Te'o into playing like a fake linebacker.

Without the heartbreaking story he might have finished third in the Heisman instead of second. He might drop a few notches from being a mid-first round pick in the 2013 NFL Draft.

All of which is interesting and established Te'o as a national punch line. But it barely registers compared to the implications of Lance-gate. So why is this getting as much attention?

First, it's Notre Dame. Ask George O'Leary how screwing up there gets magnified.

And the story was just so good. The harder we fall for something, the madder we are when it dumps us.

The media is publicly flogging itself. The editor's old line used to be, "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out." Now it's, "If your linebacker tells you he loves a dead girlfriend, check out the funeral records."

TV psychologists have been busy pondering how this shocker will affect our public trust in heroes and institutions. That erosion started about the same time the Black Sox took imaginary swings in the 1919 World Series.

If you don't remember that, you'll probably recall BALCO or O.J. or Bountygate or Pete Rose or Spygate or the Mitchell Report or Oprah's little interview with Lance.

Public trust has been getting punched in the face for a long time. Te'o should hardly qualify as the knockout blow. It's just that in today's media environment, the punches come hard and fast.

Imagine if Twitter had been around for Tonya and Nancy? Now that was a scandal. We could revel in the trashiness, but there was real crime and consequence.

Te'o is almost purely a guilty pleasure. We can't wait for the next chapter to see if it has any answers.

What did he know? When did he know it? Did he do it just to hide a secret crush on Rudy?

Riveting stuff, no doubt. But compared to real scandals, it reads like pure make believe.